Volvo Cars will continue its focus on the development of autonomous drive software after acquiring one half of Zenuity, the assisted and autonomous driving software development company.
Volvo Cars’ part of Zenuity will focus on developing unsupervised autonomous drive software that will be introduced in the next generation of cars based on Volvo’s SPA2 vehicle architecture and remain separate from Volvo Cars.
Håkan Samuelsson, chief executive at Volvo Cars, says, “Volvo Cars is committed to introduce safe, unsupervised autonomous drive on highways with its next generation of cars. Allowing the new company to fully focus on this development will help us deliver on those ambitions.”
The other half of Zenuity will focus on the development and commercialization of advanced driver assistance systems and will be integrated into Veoneer, the automotive safety equipment company.
Dennis Nobelius, Zenuity’s chief executive, says, “The new company will develop safe and advanced autonomous drive software.
“We believe that in the future there will only be a limited number of global software platforms for autonomous driving. We intend to develop one of these winning platforms.”
Zenuity is currently a joint venture between Volvo Cars and Veoneer. As part of the agreement, Zenuity’s operations and people based in Gothenburg, Sweden and Shanghai, China will be transferred to the new company owned by Volvo Cars. The operations and people based in Germany and USA will be transferred to Veoneer.